American kestrels, the smallest falcon in North America, eat a diverse diet of insects, mammals, and songbirds. They can reduce pests for farmers, particularly during the spring and summer breeding season when they provision food to their chicks. Both the male and female parent contribute to parental care, but do they contribute equally? What are the consequences of different diets on developing chicks, and what drives variation in diet between different nests? This talk will explore variation in diet in a generalist predator during the nestling period.
Dr. Allison Cornell is a professor of biology at Penn State’s Altoona College. She is a behavioral ecologist and has studied reproductive behavior in songbirds, diet preferences in insects and birds, and more recently, nestling development in American kestrels. She earned her PhD in biology from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, and her BS in biology from the College of William and Mary.